When my oldest brother was dying, the hospice care person asked him, as part of his end-of-life process, if he had any regrets. His only was that he maybe should have stayed in touch with his mother.
"Do you want to get in touch with her now?"
"No."
It's like my favorite story.
I am embarrassed that at 60 years old the central theme of my existence is the legacy of damage left by my mother. I should have gone to therapy every day the rest of my life. I did so a few years, weekly, until it became an unaffordable luxury. I also wanted to prove I could do it on my own, that the only thing in the way of me was ever me, and I still believe this only I never got out of the way. So now I live with the embarrassment of this space I occupy. Alone, mind you, I no longer fling it at innocent bystanders, I've learned a few things.
I've whittled it down to two key moments, my bookends of PTSD. The first happened when I was four years old, the second when a junior in high school.
When I was four years old I was upstairs in our suburban, Levittown house and I heard coming up from downstairs the sound of my parents arguing. I stood on the landing, listening. Not to words, but to sound, energy, tone, volume. Then I could hear my mother crying. Because she was crying, I felt bad and myself began to cry. It was a private act, a reaction. She soon came upstairs and caught me standing on the landing crying. She said, "What are YOU crying for?" She slapped me across the head, she went into her bedroom and she slammed the door. I, on the landing, stunned.
In high school I was perpetually the new kid in school, we moved often and in the middle of school years. I attended four high schools in three years, each on a different coast. Add to this I was fat and not too attractive; I wasn't too fond of high school. In my junior year, it was towards the end of the year, I believe, and I found myself quite by accident hanging out. This never happened, I'm not sure how it happened at all and bonus: it was with the main kids. The popular kids? The cool kids? The main group, anyway.
I was a well-behaved child and I did not sass or talk back to my mother EVER, because I knew better, and I did not rebel. (Yes, I DID run away, responsibly.) I was asked to be home by a certain time and it became evident my ride would not get me home at that time. I called my mother. I received permission to come home later. I arrived home at the prescribed time. I did not have my key (CRAP!) and was forced to ring the doorbell to get in. My mother answered the door. It was a single action: my mother opened the door, cried, "You're drunk!," slapped me across the face, and stormed off into her room. I was stunned. Also, I'd had no alcohol. None. (Which is okay, because I'm making up for it now.)
Interestingly, there is a third story (there are many...) that one might think the crux of my PTSD, but it is not. It falls between these two poles. It was the time my mother attempted suicide, the night my father and oldest brother, then 13 years old, broke down the locked bedroom door, found her unresponsive, it all then happened so fast, the ambulance, the police, watching one carry out an armful of pill bottles, and then no one was there. There was blood on the phone. Three of us remaining, ages 11, 8, and 5, just standing there. Lore has it she died and was revived in the ambulance. Lore has it she took 150 phenobarbital and slashed both her wrists. Years later, in counseling, in college, I would be visiting my father and we were casually talking about this incident, or period of time. And my father said the most genius thing ever: Had she died we'd all have felt guilty the rest of our lives. As it is she lived and we all feel guilty the rest of our lives.
I reminded him of this years later but he didn't remember saying it. For me it broke the spell of whatever then that event held over me, and I was grateful for it.
But we are here for the apsis, ten years apart: Accuse, Slap, Retreat. Repeat!
I never told anyone, these two stories. There were no witnesses. I carried them with me, in me. I never learned not to. Not for any of these three events, or ever, did she endeavor reparation. Never an apology. Never a moment of acknowledgement, of 'maybe I could have done that differently.' Nothing at all. Like they never happened, good luck kid. And this is 50% me, I am 50% this. Her.
I am ever-vigilant but DNA runs deep and I don't always recognize how it presents. There are the obvious similarities. I am incapable of love. I say this because I don't think I've ever loved anyone I've dated, or anyone else. I say this because I can't really define love, and also I'm a bit angry at it for being untenable - (for which I blame IT, of course, not myself. SEE! There it is!) - presented so idealized and iconic it's an impossible task for the mere mortal. Some people seem to get it. I'm happy for them.
There is the occasionally-circulating meme, Introvert or Narcissist? I claim deep introvert, I've never actually read one of these articles when they make the rounds, but there it is, anyway. I don't think I'm a psychopath, though. Possibly the first sign I might indeed be a psychopath.
I know what it's like not be apologized to and possibly over-correct on this one, it pains me not at all to be wrong and to own it. But I am guilty in relationships of dismantling psyche's in the most awful way, not at the time understanding I was doing so but nonetheless. Would I do so again, now that I know? Best not to find out.
I carry this person in me. As me. Minus thought or effort, this is auto pilot, this is a good day. I wake up with this and go to bed with this and look in the mirror at this. This shame is me. What am I supposed to do with this?
The second-to-last time I saw my mother was just over 30 year ago. I'd planned the trip to California from New York well in advance and arrived to find no one home the entire time I'd scheduled it. My younger brother went to Vegas, my mother opted to work a retreat up some mountain. I stayed alone in the house and drove up that stupid mountain to see her late one afternoon. It was the late 'eighties, maybe early 'nineties, and I reflected that. My hair was bleached and Robert Smith-like (though I myself was never a fan of The Cure). My clothes were "normal" and clean, I was then alcohol and drug free, and I'd just graduated from college cum-laude. For my senior year I'd received a graduate scholarship as an undergrad. My final semester was 4.0. I'd also worked that year cleaning houses. But this wasn't the stuff that mattered. Just over an hour there, my mother turned to me and said, "I feel like I shouldn't have to look at you any longer." I thought, that can be arranged and it was. Walking out to drive down that fucking hill, she said, three times: I love you. It landed unacknowledged. I woke up the next day and left.
The only interruption to her wish was a few years later when her father died. I hemmed and hawed at attending the funeral, it was my very wise cousin who intervened: you were his favorite, it's not about you. I was his favorite, as a matter of fact. We were like peas and carrots, my grandfather and me. From day one. More lore: my grandfather was Irish Catholic, my father Protestant. He'd said if they got married he would kill himself. (I may have inherited some drama here.) He boycotted the wedding. He stayed away two brothers deep. Why me? I don't know. I went to the funeral. She and I kept a cool distance. At one point I left the proceedings to step into the lobby for a breath and she hastily followed. I said something like I wasn't holding her responsible for the past. She SNORTED! HA! YOU'RE not holding ME responsible? And then, Can I at least have your phone number?
Yes, some time had passed. "Things are going so well for me right now, why mess with success?" I walked away.
At the dinner afterwards, long table, aunts, uncles, cousins, my mother at the far end, at one point my aunt, her older sister, stopped the conversation with this beauty: "Oh, __________, you're a terrible mother, all your children hate you, everyone knows it!" Some of my family is pretty funny.
For years I had the most comforting fantasy of choking her to death, my hands wrapped around her neck, looking close into her eyes, watching them water and turn red and bulge. It was very satisfying. Recently enough I had a dream similar to this moment, her following me around, relentlessly haranguing me at fevered pitch (as she does still). I reached out for the throat, but there's an AHA! It's a set-up, it is all design. I HAVE to kill her to fulfill her endgame. See, she can then say? I AM a victim.
Just like I'm doing, saying, right now.
